Income Protection for Quantity Surveyors

It is worth stating plainly why this page reads differently from the others in this section, because the difference is real rather than presentational.

The trades on this site stop working when a body part fails. A quantity surveyor's long absences are overwhelmingly psychological, and the cause is structural: carrying commercial responsibility for seven and eight figure sums, working to deadlines set by other people's programmes, and being the person in the room whose job is to say no about money. Disputes are adversarial by design and they do not stop at five thirty.

Income protection responds to being unable to work whatever the cause, so a mental health condition is assessed on the same basis as a broken leg. What that does mean is that anything already recorded in your notes when you apply will be asked about and may be excluded, which is a stronger argument than usual for arranging cover during a settled period rather than during a difficult one.

Quantity surveyors are often better protected than most people on this site and more likely to be under-insured in absolute terms, which sounds contradictory and is not.

A group income protection scheme paying a proportion of salary sounds generous, and on a high income the remaining proportion is a large monthly sum. Somebody earning a professional salary with a mortgage sized to it does not have the slack to absorb that gap, and the shortfall is bigger in pounds than it would be for somebody earning half as much with the same percentage scheme.

There is also the question of what counts. Bonus, car allowance and overtime may or may not be included in the figure the scheme is based on, and for some surveyors those are a meaningful part of total earnings. The useful exercise is to find out what your scheme actually pays, on what, and for how long, and then decide whether to top it up rather than assuming it is handled.

Employed quantity surveyors usually have death in service at a multiple of salary, and often a decent one, which is a genuine head start.

Two standard checks apply. It is tied to the employment, so going contracting or self-employed removes it at exactly the point your income becomes less certain, and it is normally calculated on basic salary, so bonus and allowances may not count.

The sizing question is sharper on a professional income because the mortgage usually matches it. A multiple of salary that would comfortably clear a modest mortgage may not clear a larger one and support a family through two decades, which is the calculation worth doing against your own benefit statement.

The useful thing a lump sum does for a professional on a good salary is not survival, it is choice.

After a serious illness, plenty of surveyors are capable of working and not capable of carrying the same commercial pressure, hours and travel. The realistic options are a less intense role, fewer days, or client side rather than contractor side, and most of those involve earning less.

A lump sum makes that affordable by clearing a chunk of the mortgage or funding the gap, which turns a necessary change into a manageable one. For somebody whose income depends on sustaining pressure rather than on physical capability, that is the specific risk worth covering.

A day rate quantity surveyor has none of the employed protections and usually a higher headline income, which is the most exposed combination in this profession.

No sick pay, no death in service, no group scheme, and an engagement that generally ends if you cannot attend. The income looks better on paper and there is nothing at all behind it, so cover is doing the whole job rather than topping something up.

If you run a practice with other surveyors, there is a second question: the commercial knowledge of live projects sits with individuals, so losing a senior surveyor mid-dispute is a real financial risk to the firm. That is what cover on a key person is for, and it is arranged by and paid to the business.